As the economy slides, the safety net doesn't catch women

You know times are tough when the Wall Street Journal runs stories on how hard it is to qualify for unemployment. This week the Journal reports that most of those losing their jobs in the current economic slide won’t qualify for unemployment benefits.

Only 37% of the country's unemployed received benefits in 2007, down from 55% in 1958 and 44% in 2001, according to the Labor Department. The others have exhausted their benefits, haven't applied or don't qualify.

The article goes on to note that the unemployment insurance system was set up for “traditional male breadwinners in traditional, manufacturing-type jobs," according to labor economist Lawrence F. Katz, and doesn’t fit people who work part-time, move in and out of work, or juggle multiple jobs. Which means, especially, it doesn’t fit mothers.

This is not news to me. When I went on unemployment after losing my job shortly after my first child was born because my employer was unwilling to accommodate my need for part-time work, I went through the wringer. First I had to fight to prove I qualified, in part because I’d been working part-time. I had to claim I was seeking full-time work. Then, I faced the Kafka-esque double bind that jeopardizes mothers who try to claim insurance benefits: Failure to have childcare counts as not being “ready and available for work,” and therefore disqualifies you for benefits. It’s true; how can you even look for work if you don’t have childcare, let alone accept work, what with decent childcare taking so long to locate? But how are you supposed to pay for childcare if you don’t have a job—and you can’t get unemployment? Nor of course is childcare provided as an unemployment benefit. It was maddening.

I got caught on the horns of this dilemma because I was twice required to come in to the unemployment offices to wait around and let underpaid bureaucrats peruse my paperwork. Once my partner was unavailable to watch our daughter, and although I was allowed to reschedule my mandatory appointment, this triggered the remorseless wheels of denial. Luckily, the human caseworker carefully asked me if I was unavailable—had no childcare—all the time or just that one time. I said just the once, she didn’t push further, and I was docked exactly $36 from my unemployment check. Thank goodness for real humans inside the system.

But the system must be changed, not just as the Journal suggests, to allow for people outside of long-term, full-time work, but also by providing childcare assistance as an unemployment benefit. In these hard times, change can't wait.